Patterns of chemical diversity in the marine ascidian spp.: anti-tumor activity and metabolic pathway inhibiting steroid biosynthesis.

The complex nature of marine biodiversity is partially responsible for the lack of studies in Indian ascidian species, which often target a small number of novel biomolecules. We performed untargeted metabolomics using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) in two invasive ascidian species to investigate the inter-specific chemical diversity of and in search of drug-like properties and metabolic pathways. The chemical profiling of individual ascidian species was obtained using GC-MS, and the metabolites were determined by searching in NIST library and literature data.